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Q: I feel quite insecure when my boyfriend goes out to bars and parties with his friends, coworkers, or cousins. He travels for work and often goes out afterwards for drinks with co-workers. He has friends in a lot of places and often meets up with them.

I'm afraid a girlfriend of one of his cousins or friends will bring their pretty single friend along and he'll be into them.

Why do I feel this way? I want to be secure in our relationship. I want to know that when he's out and meeting new people, he's thinking of me.

I don't want to be afraid of him meeting new people because I think it's healthy and I know he's social by nature.

We've been dating a year, and he has said he's not ready yet to say he loves me. I love him and told him so.

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I feel like maybe he still wants to keep his options open or that I'm not ‘The One’ for him.

A: You took a risk and said the “L” word first. He held back. That’s a set-up for insecurity, and you’ve both contributed to your feeling that way.

Unfortunately, I suspect you tend to feel insecure because you’ve even created scenarios in your head about “the pretty” other person he’ll fall for.

It’s not healthy or wise for you to build so much anxiety … it makes you appear needy and leaves you more vulnerable, in case you two do break up.

Back off. Clear your mind when it wanders into imaginings, drop the “I love you’s” (without anger or hints) and let him just wonder why you stopped. Show interest in his friends, cousins, co-workers, and hopefully he’ll invite you along when it’s possible.

If he doesn’t, you need to build the strength to move on, if it turns out you’re both not ‘The One’ for each other.

Q: I purchased two outdoor chairs at a large department store.

When I got home, I discovered that the receipt was for a much lesser amount than they cost. Should I return to the store and pay the difference?

A: You already know the answer — it’s a bother, but … back you go.

You sent this to me, a relationship advice columnist, rather than the more logical choice — an ethics commentator. After all, the ethics are seemingly straightforward.

You didn’t intend to cheat the store of their profit, but if you knowingly accept the mistake, you’re complicit in it.

Yet, how ‘ethical’ is it, you might wonder, for big businesses to charge large profits? And since this store likely does mark some items up high, you might also think they’ll never miss the amount you could save by ignoring the salesperson’s error.

This brings you to my territory — your relationship with an individual with whom you dealt, as well as with yourself.

That salesperson can probably be traced to a connection with those chairs being way undersold. He/she may be reprimanded, perhaps with the difference in profit taken from his/her pay.

You can prevent this loss by going back to the store and paying the difference. It’s an amount you were prepared to give up when you made the purchase.

So the final answer here is about YOU. If you see yourself as honest, decent, upstanding, and aware of the consequences of your actions to others, you’ll hurry back to the store.

TIP OF THE DAY

If you use the “L” word to try getting it said back to you, you may be setting yourself up for relationship insecurity.

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